A way better doodle than the ugly cat it started out as!

A few weeks ago, I went for a quick Saturday spin that had the makings, I thought, of a cat’s face. Using that route as a starting point, I designed a cat. And although my puss’s puss was decidedly ugly, I set out on Monday to ride the route. It just wasn’t to be, though, as the bog I needed to cross to doodle the kitty-cat’s nose, mouth and whiskers proved uncrossable.

A blessing in disguise, it turns out, as my aborted doodle inspired me to shift gears from feline to strigine and uncover, in the streets of Victoria, a great big owl with teeny-tiny feet.

AeroDog is the latest addition to my growing collection of canine GPS Doodles

In the Chinese zodiac, 2018 is the Year of the Dog. So to join my already-doodled canine collection featured below (including Doggie Do(odle), Growly Dog with a Ball, Superdawg and, I suppose, this aberration), I doodled another dog today. He seems kinda cartoony. I think I’ll call him AeroDog.

A: This atrocity (a Llabrador retriever, I guess)

Sometimes a GPS Doodle just can’t decide what it wants to be. The shape I spotted in the map (below) looked decidedly like a llama; but when I started to flesh out the details, the face and front end became curiously canine. Oh well…everyone loves a chimera.

After a way-too-long hiatus, I’m looking forward to getting back into the GPS Doodling groove in 2018. I figured I’d kick off a new year of doodling the same way I kicked off the whole phenomenon back in 2015…with a little bike-writing on frosty roads on the first day of the New Year. You can watch the Doodle take shape in the Relive.cc video below…

It looks like this…The Sea Creature of Saanich Peninsula

I planned this GPS Doodle in November 2015 – a year and a half ago – but only got around to riding the route today. I knew it was going to be big, but when I used DaftLogic’s Google Maps Area Calculator Tool to see just how big, I was gobsmacked. Requiring 109 kilometres (68 miles) of cycling to complete, this huge sea monster occupies a rectangular canvas covering 93.1 million square metres…just over 1 billion square feet!

A YYJ birdie inspired by Strava’s Global Heat Map

I find inspiration for my GPS Doodles in all sorts of places. Many begin as shapes that emerge as I pore over a city map. Others I go looking for to celebrate special occasions or fulfill special requests. Sometimes a feature of the cityscape inspires a Doodle (this little alien dude, for example). And sometimes inspiration springs from Strava’s Global Heatmap. That’s how I found the giant bunny I doodled in Calgary for Easter 2016, and it’s how I spotted the songbird I doodled yesterday…

Sometimes I do a GPS Doodle thinking it’s one thing, but it turns out to look like something else altogether. Case in point: today’s Doodle.

The picture I planned was one of those flappy, floppy “airdancers” you often see outside gas stations and tire shops. (Fans of Rectify will know what I’m talking about.) But as soon as I uploaded my 51 kilometre (32 mile) ride to Strava, people started commenting.

“It looks like an Ent from Lord of the Rings,” said one. (Interestingly, today is Tolkien Reading Day.) “Hey – it’s the Cheestrings guy!” said another. Someone else thought it was Gumby. And my wife wondered if it was a cartoon carrot or parsnip.